What happened in that moment that you knew you needed to get serious and keep writing? What was that thought, feeling, life change that made you realize you had to use every spare second to pick up a pen and write and not stop? And further, how do you stay there? What makes you carry on?
I have been writing for quite some time but never serious until I started a round-robin fan fiction for fun with a friend and it turned out the plot was too good to waste on a fan fiction. We will be finishing the fan fiction this month and than start rewriting it into an original story (I'm already starting with that). And it does feel very serious to me, though it's not always easy since I'm working with a co-author who writes slower than me. The fact that I want to tell this story makes me carry on, though there are days when I just cannot write because I'm too tired or don't have the right 'vibe'.
I think the defining moment of when I wanted to begin writing was when my father read The Magician's Nephew to me when I was about five or six, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, I could write that." Ever since then I've never stopped - I've forever wanted to create a world as magical and characterful, and believable, and not necessarily fantasy. Then, in terms of my defining writing moment ever, I would have to say it was finishing my first novel, which surprisingly was less than two and a half years ago! I've written another novel and a few short stories since then, and the experience it gave me simply of practicing the craft was unbelievable. I will never foget it, and it has shaped me as a writer. And as for what makes me carry on, as I said, it really is to try and create worlds which will grip the reader by the throat and never let go; a world which will not let the reader rest until every page of it has been read. Just as the books I read have stories to tell, so do I have my own stories to tell, and I will never stop.
One of most important factors that a writer should have is the talent and the passion for writing. Another very important factor is practicing. And most of the expressive stories are those which come from the experiences of pain.
I recently had a major surgery and as I laid on my hospital bed waiting to be taken to the operating room I thought "Oh crap If I die on the operating table all of the writing projects that I need to edit and prepare for publication won't get published." It was that moment I realized that if I survived the surgery I need to pull my head of my butt and get serious about my writing.
When, out of the many stories rolling around in my head, one was too good to not tell. When I had the need to tell a story that I couldn't resist.
When I realised that I was a very small person in the possession of a very short life. By writing, I could live as many lifetimes as I wanted, and skip all the training/studying/painful/boring bits. I could become a part of something that was bigger than me. Also, it makes me happy. Nothing more satisfying than going to bed having written exactly what you wanted to say.
I'll tell you when I find it. Writing for me tends to go hand-in-hand with sobriety. But I'm not sure if I write because I'm sober or write to get sober... Either way, aside from a short piece, I haven't written anything in about 6 weeks . No drive whatsoever.
Senior year in high school. We had a course entitled "Problems of Democracy", which was actually a current events course, taught by someone who had firm political views that were fairly conservative. One other student in the class and I would argue with him all the time, but he never got emotional and never took it personally. That year, I was also a page editor for the school newspaper, and I wrote an editorial on political discourse - the need to argue with reason rather than emotion and to conduct a civilized discourse. The day the paper came out, he complimented me in front of the class on it. And I thought, "Hey, I can really write." The fact that my view didn't ultimately "take" has not dissuaded me.
the near brush with the edge of sanity, it helps me keep off energy drinks (which ive been know to drink way too much of)
When a young person showed me her inspired work, and I realized I'd not gotten around to doing my own.
When all of the characters in my head began holding my vital organs hostage and depriving me of sleep until I freed them into the cellulose universe where they would become immortals
Back when I was 15 and I started writing my first novel draft. It was enjoyable. Developing these characters in a world I made myself and escaping in it. There wasn't any reason not to write.
Last month, when I kept thinking about how I should be writing but I wasn't. I decided I need to give it up completely, or just go ahead and do it. So far, so good. I keep some goals about my computer to remind me what I'm working towards.
I knew I could write when I was young. Email got me into editing and writing humor. Setting up an invisible joke in the first paragraph and springing the punch line in the last. In my "Advanced Expository Writing" class, in college, my professor held up my first paper in front of the class and declared it the "first perfect paper I have ever read." I couldn't wait to find out whose it was! The next class, my future wife sat next to me and made jokes that were clever and witty. She called it "Advanced Suppository Writing" and when the teacher gazed at the greenish-yellow tables at which we all sat and asked what color we thought these might be, she paused for a beat and said "Phlegm." We divorced, in 2000. Writing won't save a bad marriage. What started me actually trying to write for a living: Last year, I was working on a machine, at my 9-5 and entertaining myself with a made-up story about what it would be like if the girl I had a crush on and I were stuck together, in a world with essentially no other people. I imagined back to a fairly believable ending to the rest of the world and me saving her in the nick of time (starvation). After that, the book built itself as a series of surmountable problems that we addressed as they came up. Suddenly, I was at work, thinking this story was entertaining me enough that I thought it might just entertain others. Suddenly I needed to get it on paper before it got lost in my brain. After that I just wrote and wrote. On days when I did not write, but could have... or something came up and I couldn't, I realized I missed it terribly. I needed to be doing it. Writing. Waiting a month to edit what I'd written was very difficult. I wanted to be writing so much! I'm not an addict. I could quit writing any time I want! [scratching forearms and rocking back and forth]
I love how you put this. BY MOT: By writing, I could live as many lifetimes as I wanted, and skip all the training/studying/painful/boring bits. I could become a part of something that was bigger than me. Also, it makes me happy. Nothing more satisfying than going to bed having written exactly what you wanted to say. In turn, making you larger than life. It happens to me too. I get all psyched then for some unknown reason, deflate. Youth. Sometimes I wish I was there again. Easy to lose your joy when slammed with the realities of life.
I love the way everyone puts their feelings into words and thinks carefully about why they do what they do. This forum is so REFRESHING! And it's not just women who are doing the navel-gazing. Shockingly, men also take a moment to be introspective and then specifically place the words in just such an order, to express clearly, but symbolically, what they mean. I love this place.
I decided when I was 9 that I wanted to be a fiction writer - from that day onwards I wrote everyday. At 14 I decided I was going to take that goal more seriously and invested time into the mechanics of writing, teaching myself things that the school wouldn't cover for another 2-3 years. By 18 I'd been published in numerous poetry/short story anthologies in addition to having had articles printed in my hometown's local paper. Then at 20 I realised that my ideas weren't suited to prose and switched to script - this also better compliments my non-writing goals. Much of what I've written over the past year hasn't been for fun, but because I've been asked to do so. Although I'm currently writing the script for the first season of a television show simply for pleasure. I've considered pitching it, but I probably won't. I just want to experiment with writing for a larger cast than I'm used to.
Oh my god, do it. Your god too! The worst that happens is it sells and you learn to hate Hollywood (or New York) but you'd have learned stuff you'd never have known!
When I had characters in my head that were trying to claw their way out. When I wrote something that shook me to my core. When I realized how cathartic writing is. When I knew I'd go nuts if I didn't get this story onto paper. All of those times.
For me there never was one defining moment. I was twelve when a teacher complimented my essay and after my parents had read it my father said, perhaps jokingly, that I should become a writer. I didn't start to write back then and I think the earliest story was a horror story I wrote when I was 16-17. It was pretty bad and I don't have it anymore. About two years ago I started to write again but I couldn't keep up writing because I constantly lost inspiration and started to doubt myself. For the past month I've written something everyday and I plan to keep this up. If I take breaks, I lose inspiration. My motivation? I want to do something creative. Originally the dream was to write a film, but probably even getting short stories published is a pipe dream. Writing is also a chance to think about real life issues and philosophical dilemmas through fiction. The fairly good feedback I've received here is also something that keeps me going. Nobody in real life knows that I'm writing and last weekend I almost came out of the closet.
Certain authors have pushed the right buttons at just the right time, and caused me to feel every emotion they intended me to. Ever since I read a book like that, I've wanted to do that to someone else.
